Binaural hearing refers to the use of both ears in order to locate the direction of sound sources. Binaural hearing boosts a person's ability to focus on speech in noisy situations, and allows a person to tune into relatively soft sounds. Unfortunately many cochlear implant patients (i.e., people who have been fitted with a cochlear implant in one or both ears) are incapable of binaural hearing. For example, conventional unilateral cochlear implant systems detect sound provided to only one ear of a patient, thus resulting in the patient being incapable of binaural hearing (assuming that the patient cannot hear with the non-implanted ear). Even some conventional bilateral cochlear implant systems do not provide a full sense of binaural hearing to a patient.